Uber and Airbnb show the sharing economy is on its way – like it or not

Britons seem reluctant to embrace the likes of Uber, Airbnb and Zipcar, but mobile technology is sure to revolutionise business

The strike by London black-cab drivers protesting at Uber is unlikely to be the only one made by workers defending their jobs from the growing use of mobile technology. Photograph: Kriss Lee/Demotix/Corbis

Asked if they would rent out a room in their house, see their car disappear for a daily return of £30 or lend someone their best suit or dress for cash, 63% told pollsters "no thanks". The survey found women in the UK were even more reluctant than men.

Across southern Europe, a sense of desperation has turned millions of people to sharing, in a reversal of the proportion who say yes in the UK.

Nielsen, which carried out an online global survey of 30,000 people, mused that British reserve may be at the root, combined with a relative wealth that makes sharing unnecessary.

Yet the tide is turning, especially among young Britons, who the survey found were much more likely to embrace the idea.

And why would they not be in favour of sharing when low and stagnant wages combined with a rising cost of living and weekly advances in mobile technology make it easier and potentially more profitable.

The technology is already uprooting whole industries, such is its power. The strike last week by London black-cab drivers is likely to be the first of many protests by groups of workers fearful of being made redundant by sharing software. And is indicative of the pressure governments are under to rewrite rules made for the old economy.

Uber is a mobile application that links self-employed drivers to customers without the need to hail a cab or phone a minicab. Its claim that it isn't a taxi firm, but a "ride sharing" company, doing little more than connecting drivers with passengers, appears to be in breach of London's rules protecting the metered black cab. A court ruling is pending.

San Francisco-based Airbnb has fallen foul of tough laws in London that require landlords to apply for planning permission from the council to rent out their homes for less than three months. In response ministers have promised to sweep away the rule and allow homeowners a more flexible route to renting a room or the whole place as and when they don't need it for themselves.

Zipcar, the car-club operator, is putting pressure on No 10 to classify its business as a form of public transport to exempt its charges from VAT. In a similar vein, a group of startup property consultants wants the government to change the way business rates are calculated to accommodate pop-up shops. At the moment a lease can be as long or short as a landlord likes, but a property must be unused for at least three months before it is exempt from business rates. Why not a weekly calculation for business rates relief, they ask.

Other starlets on the widening stage of "peer-to-peer" websites include Zopa, which lends money directly to borrowers; EasyCar Club, which allows car owners to hire out their vehicle to a stranger; and sites such as Girl Meets Dress that allow customers to hire rather than buy a party dress. And for every entrepreneur who is looking to get rich quick, there is another, usually wealthy in their own right, giving away their software in the name of community or localism.

In January, Lord Young welcomed many of these businesses to No 10 and praised them for bravely confronting outmoded means of production. He ditched the friendlier phrase "creative disruption" adopted by many sharing firms in favour of "creative destruction". Young, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, is the kind of free marketer who knows that big business can ossify an economy. Among 18th-century lords of the manor, he would have been the first to buy a threshing machine.

Job destruction obviously displaces labour, but the sharing economy is absorbing some of them. Manpower, the recruitment agency, said last week that the rise of internet shopping and sharing via apps on mobile phones is triggering a shift in the transport industry. No longer are clothes and books making their way from large distribution centres to individual homes.

Increasingly they are arriving at a local delivery hub to be taken to their destination by a self-employed driver who uses an app to log in and out of work.

This rising tide of self-employment accounts for two out of five jobs created in the past year, pushing the number of people who work for themselves to one in seven of the workforce. While many will be self-employed out of necessity and earning, on average, about 40% less than their employed counterparts, a sizeable proportion consider themselves entrepreneurs and are excited about being their own boss.

Analysis by the Royal Society of Arts shows that for every worker who loses out there are three who say they benefit. It is an entrepreneurialism that the RSA argued is indicative of an unstoppable shift .

Respondents cited factors such as being able to live where they want and work around caring for older relatives or children. The rising cost of childcare was a key consideration, as was the escalating cost of commuting.

Largely unspoken was the lack of pay, wage rises and decent pensions on offer in mainstream jobs culture.

The tax system also encourages workers to look beyond the workplace for extra income. A combination of income tax and national insurance places a 32% marginal tax rate on standard rate taxpayers. Capital gains tax by contrast charges the basic rate taxpayer a rate of 18%, and a higher-rate taxpayer 28%. As such, gains on wealth are more lightly taxed than earned income.

So there are signs that younger home buyers are calculating the gains from renting out a room when they calculate the affordability of a flat that might at first seem out of reach. What if, they ask themselves, they target areas near good transport, a tourist destination or amenities with a view to capitalising on the location by renting some or all of it out, at least for some of the year?

There is some way to go, but this changing way of doing business is surely coming. British reluctance to share is certainly not matched unwillingness to trade stuff online. We are among the biggest eBay-ers in the world and Alibaba.com, the Chinese version of eBay for the business community, reports that UK members are among the biggest sellers on its site (most firms across Europe just seek to buy cheap Asian goods).

Mobile phone use is high in the UK, social media is the cornerstone of many family communications and we are not far behind the US in adopting new ways of doing business online.

Dan Gillmor: The so-called 'sharing economy' has already disrupted a lot more than traffic. If peer-to-peer startups are too cheap and easy for an eroding global middle class to ignore, what happens next?